Vaccination - do you or don't you?

[lisalisa]

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What does surprise me though is the amount of viruses there are these days that we cannot shake off.
What is that all about? My baby hasn't had any big cold, cough, ear infections as yet.
Eats dirt and all the other stuff a happy healthy boy does.
Yet we are bombarded with anti bacterial cleaning products, wipes, sterilise this, steralise that. Vaccination for this vaccinations for that.
And the body now it seems cannot cope with an eensy weensy little common thing called a cold now known as a virus.
Qnd what about MRSA in hospitals I am actually more concerned about that aspect of things to be honest. We are damaging ourselves with overmedicating?

Mistressmary - I went to a very interesting lecture by John Maynard Smith (a fantastic evolutionary Biologist- now deceased) about 8 years ago. He was fairly livid about then current situation. He said that when antibiotics were introduced the medical profession were warned that misuse would render them useless within a very short timescale, which of course is what is beginning to happen.

I think my view of antibiotics is the same as my view of vaccinations really. If used properly they are wonderful drugs - but they have been totally and utterly misused - and mismanufactured (why the hell was a neurotoxin being injected into babies when the bloody stuff didn't even need to be in there). I can't remember the figure - but I think it would have cost $1 more to make a single dose dtp for my son (which then wouldn't have required thimerosil). So I guess his chance of independent life has been taken away from him for the sake of $3. To date his ability to understand language has aso been taken away for $3 - that's heck of a big price to pay.

Thatas the way I see it JimJams, is there any lit. on his theory?

ds is 9 weeks today and I have just put off his 5-in-1 immunisation as he has a cold. I am dreading it - just don't know what to do for the best. dd had the old mercury-laced jabs . it is so hard. is this 5-in-1 really safer? what are the risks? I'm so confused.

Sorry I ventured to express a different view here. I usually find MN to be more of a forum for two-sided debate. Have never been shouted down quite so forcefully before.

lulupop, i don't think anyone has shouted you down!
I always like two sides, that's how we learn and take others views on board. Doesn't mean we have to agree!

is the thimerosol-free dtp much safer? is the pertussis bit safer too? I had two doses of antibios in pregnancy and IV antibios in labour. is ds more at risk from immunisations? panic panic panic.

This is a healthy debate.
And to be honest I would have been in your shoes a while back with being shouted down for going against the norm.
But why should I stay quiet for feeling the way I do? It's an obviouls very big deal for parents one way or another to think about.
I respect your choice, for your children though.

It is so unusual... and it won't last for anti-vaccination folks to be the "majority" on a discussion!
BTW - Diny - you can wait for his first shots (especially if you are BF).... in the US the first shots are at 3months... it's "only" the Uk that starts so early... another reason to question immunization - sigh...

I', looking into all this immunization stuff... mainly in relation to MMR as my dd is 13 months... can someone tell me what these risk groups are that you mention, and briefly what the main contentions of the debate are? some of these terms i've never heard of....

and lockets, I didn't suggest that children who hadn;t been vaccinated should be kept at home. What I said was, if it's a choice between children who have no choice over vaccination having to be denied as normal a life as possible, and those whose parents simply "don't want to take the (for the vast majority, miniscule) risk", then maybe the parents of the latter should be encouraged to reconsider the evidence.

Sorry the risk of what ?
What do you mean?

velcrobott, am bf. why does that mean can wait - maternal antibodies?

Yes - GPs (from what i have seen) have no problem with dealying immunization when you are BF.

should say, that at the moment i am of the opinion that dd will be vaccinated, but some of these points are new to me.....

sorry for the delay between my posts... dd woke up!

The following afflictions have been reported subsequent to the individual or combined vaccines: neurologic disorders, seizure disorders, learning disabilities, encephalitis, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (demyelination of the nerve sheaths), Guillain-Barré syndrome (paralysis), muscle incoordination, autism, deafness, optic neuritis (including partial or total blindness), fever, headache, joint pain, arthritis (acute and chronic), transverse myelitis, thrombocytopenia (blood clotting disorders and spontaneous bleeding), anaphylaxis (severe allergic reactions), inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, meningitis, diabetes, immune system disorders, and death.

Are these miniscule risks for my child?
Sorry Lulupop, I have considered and reconsidered and thse are significant risks too.

what are the % risks of these disorders... ie how often are they associated with a vaccine?

I got this from thinktwice.com.

Children also suffer severe reactions after eating peanuts, strawberries, soya products, suffering bee stings, etc etc ad infinitum. As a parent it is your duty to weigh up - realistically - the potential risks versus known benefits to your child.

are the risks you list miniscule to YOUR child? I don't know, I'm not a doctor, and I don't know your child's history. What I can say is, as a parent I have also , of course, considered all the vaccination risks to my own children. It seemed to me that, for a small number of children who have a pre-existing susceptibility to auto-immune conditions, vaccination could act as a catalyst. Since my family has no history of any problems with such conditions, I was prepared to take the chance that my child was not one of that group. Just as I was prepared to let him eat new foods, play outside, etc, without spending every spare minute fretting about the worst case scenario

dinny- the neudstaedter book I mentioned earier is really good for summarising the pros and cons- makes it very clear what the actual risks and benefits are.

dinny the pertussis given is now acellular- so is safer than the old whole cell. The main problem with pertussis is that the bacteria has actually mutated- and there is a new form out that has evolved because of vaccinaiton and isn't protected against by vaccination. The vaccine will only protect against the old form. I have no idea what the relative %s of the 2 types are (don't expect anyone has- probably hasn't been looked at).

Breastfeeding gives very good protection against hib- and is the main reason I fed ds2 for 2 years. Meningitis C is mainly a disease of teenagers and young adults. Diptheria isn't in the UK, ditto polio (the only polio cases in the last decade + have come from the oral polio vaccine). Pertussis is nasty in young babies- although ds2 was exposed heavily at 4 months- and didn't get it (I did give him homeopathic pertussin but nothing else). Tetanus isn't really a danger to babies in the UK until crawling outside (except from a cord infection- but that would occur before vaccination anyway). Certainly they can be postponed. My original decision with ds2 was to postpone whilst I read more (actually was an easy decision to make as he was quite poorly for his first 6 weeks and I didn't want him being vaccinated then).

re the antibiotics- its fine to give probiotics to babies (I did with ds2 as he needed antibiotics at 6 weeks_ but breastfeeding is probably just as good anyway.

where can i get information that would give me statistical data on these things?

spod- the problem with wieghing up that sort of evidence is that vaccine reactions are notoriously under-reported. I know a number of children who started having seizures within hours/days of a vaccination. None of those reactions were reported as an adverse reaction- and these children have gone on to have repeated problems- in some cases lifelong conditions. You won't get an accurate figure of the number of children affected though as they don't exist.

Lulupop- trouble is no-one is trying to identify children at risk. A simple family history would have revealed our autoimmune problems- none taken. My current GP is very good- but in the past I came under a lot of pressure to vaccinate ds2. I can now shake off the pressure as I have actually read more of the original research than any doctor or HV I have come across- so they tend to back off. But none of them have the training to identify individual children who are at higher risk from vax. It's not even recognised.

The 5 million spent advertising the MMR a few years ago would have been about the right amount of money needed to individualise the vaccination programme- so that individual risks could be accounted for. It'll never happen.